A New Back Door

Simple job from a regular customer of mine. 

Chang this tired old back door and frame:-

 For this oak one -

The porch is getting rendered as well so it should all look great when it's done!

A Pair Of Doors

I recently made and hung a pair of doors for some customers who live in the village. 

The door was built to their proportions and given a clean looks by not adding fussy mouldings. 

I was really pleased with how they turned out. 

Large Door

I fitted this door I made for a very happy customer today.

It's a monster at nearly three foot wide and eight feet tall! 

Altering A Doorway

A couple of weeks ago I had to alter a door way that used to have double doors. 

Since then pipe work has been added either side and a fridge was to be positioned behind, so they decided to have the one half partitioned off and a glazed door ont he other half.

To do the work I first had to build the frame out either side 75mm, I then hung the door and built the partition to suit. Quite a tricky job when you first look at it but when it's broken down into stages it becomes quite straight forward. 

The customer was more than happy and sent me a thank you note when they paid. 

New Wall In An Office

Not a very interesting post this one I'm afraid as I didn't take many photos but it follows on from the last post about the shop counter. When I'd finished building the counter we all decided that the second office was too big and the space would be better used as somewhere to display items for sale.

 So last week I went back and built a new wall out of 3x2 studding and clad it with MDF (so it was easy to fix things to) with insulation between, I then added a 2'9" door with a large glazed panel. 

Taking the old wall out was easy enough, although I was surprised as the metal studding used was welded together, something I'd never seen before, normally it's just held together with the plasterboard.

I gave it all a lick of paint when I finished and other than a last coat on the door the area is ready to be used. 

Large Wardrobe With Sliding Doors

The last few weekends I've been finishing some wardrobes with a friend of mine.

 They are rather large, measuring 4.5m long with 4 sliding doors and a wardrobe rail that I can do pull ups on!

The sliding door gear we've been using is the best I've come across. I can smoothly slide a 4ftx8ft door with my little finger and they glide across the room. The doors are made from a sheet of MDF wrapped with aluminium channel, this gives the edge a nice finish and also means that the sliding gear can be fixed securely into the of the MDF.

I'll post some more pictures of these wardrobes when they're finished.

Altering The Layout Of A House

A friend and customer of mine does drawings for a living (in fact he did the drawings for my own extension), so I wasn't surprised when I went to do some work on his hous and there wasn't a single drawing to look at! We were completely changing the layout of the upstairs of his house. the upstairs was two bedrooms, a lot of landing space and an airing cupboard. 

New hole into the second bedroom

 He decided that by creating the access to the second bedroom off the stairs he could then use all the landing space and a small amount in the bedroom to create a new bathroom upstairs. It's difficult to explain what he's done without seeing a floor plan but it really works well and makes much better use of space.

An area in the second bedroom where the bath was going to go

handrail and airing cupboard to be removed

New steps built. A job like this takes a surprising amount of time as it's a really fiddly job to do!

Staring to build the bulkhead over the stairs to form the new bathroom and make the most of that space over the stairs that's often wasted.

New door way into the second bedroom, brought out into the room to allow for the steps the other side of the door. I hung the door before plastering or plasterboard so it could just be removed when the plasterer comes and refitted afterwards (saves me a repeat visit)

Studwork for the bath ready to be boarded.

Dan was really pleased with how much I got done in two days, especially considering how much thinking was involved to make sure everything was in the right place and making the best use of space. 

By using someone to redesign the layout of your house it's surprising how much better it can make a house flow and I'd say you'd also add a lot of value as well. His website is here and I really recommend him for any drawing work you need.

Changing Doors

This is a job I've been working on in the evenings and weekends for the last month or so. I've changed most of the doors in the house and the two front doors.

Before

After

 It's amazing the difference changing the front door and painting the windows has made to the front of the house. Certainly improved it's curl appeal!

I changed most of the internal doors for oak as well, and I made a couple on site for the cupboard under the stairs. Architrave and skirtings were also changed for oak in places as well. I treated them all with a coat of Osmo oil before leaving them. 

Hopefully all this work will make the house more appealing to potential customers.

A Pair Of Doors

Last Saturday I fitted a frame and hung a pair of doors on a building we'd been working on.

 When you get to fit the frame as well as the doors its normally makes the job easier, as any twist can be taken out with a small adjustment of the frame. These doors were made bang on so no adjustment needed.

Set up outside on a sunny day

Hinges cut nice and tightly on

The finished pair of doors

A nice job for a sunny day. 

Repairing An Old Door

Repaired an old door today.

Splicing in a lime block

After looking closely at the door I decided that it was lime, there are lime floor boarding the house so that's a clue and I could tell from the close even grain and the way it cut with the chisel. I did think at first it was elm but it was far too soft for that.

The corner had rotted away with woodworm so I chiseled this out and added a block off an old lime floorboard.

Gluing the block on

 

Carving the detail in.

 I then had to carry the moldings on across the new block. I did this with my carving chisels, it's good to use them as not much work calls out for them any more and luckily it's lime as its one of the best woods to carve. I was pleased with the finish and by the time it's oiled up it will look like a quality repair - not hidden from sight though as that's not being true to what you're doing to a three hundred year old door!

Hanging Doors With A Circular Saw

Although I'm ever the traditionalist I do like to try new methods of doing things and seeing what works well. I'm sure the traditional carpenters of "old" would have tried new things if it made their job easier and better.

 So yesterday I had a try at hanging two pairs of door using my festool circular saw and no plane (except to remove any saw marks at the end).

Ever since I brought this plunge saw/guide rail combo I've been thinking that it would be easy to hang certain types of doors with it. In practise I'd go as far as to say it was a brilliant way to hang the doors.

 First of all it's a good clean way to trim the tops and bottoms of the doors so they fit in the hole. Then it also worked really well to get the doors square in the opening, normally this can involve a fair bit of planing if something is out of square. All I had to do here was set the guide rail up and within a few minutes the door was cut perfectly straight.

As these were pairs of doors they needed quite a heavy leading edge, again this was easy done with the saw, just set it on the angle and zipped along the guide rail in a few passes, giving me a perfect leading edge down the length of the door.

Four doors hung!

I'm not sure how many doors I've hung over the years but these are the first ones I've done completely with a circular saw. Although the method would only work for certain types of doors, its a good and accurate way of fitting doors and I'll be trying it again in the future.

Anyone else done it this way?

Two Large Doors

Saturdays work involved hanging two large doors - 3ft 6in wide and 7ft high.

 Luckily they weren't glazed otherwise I'm fairly sure I wouldn't have been able to hang them on my own, as it was they were near the limit of what I could handle (they were 56mm thick as well).

 They were hung on parliment hinges and the doors were at the top of three steps. This meant that before I could hang each one I had to build myself a little platform to work off. With parliment hinges you have to be careful how you set them or it can all go horiblly wrong as you can work off the knuckle of the hinge like you can normally, luckily mine went on with no problems.

One door on and the other on the benches being cut and planed to size

By the end of the day I had both doors swinging and the locks drilled out, but by then I was loosing light and had to call it a day.

Charpentier

The last week turned out to be a bit of an adventure.
After a few phone call, someone going to Liverpool passport office for me and a ferry ride, I ended up going with a friend to work in France for the week!

Leaving England behind

 The job was to fit a flight of stairs, handrail out a balcony and to second fix as much of the house as possible. We got loads done over some really long days.
Unfortunately the stairs were a nightmare to fit. Whoever had measured them to fit had given absolutely no tolerance to get them in. They had winders round a complete 180 degrees so things became a little difficult. It would have been much easier if they'd had gone in before the house was boarded or plastered. We got them in in the end but we did have to cut the wall in a few places to make them fit.

These stairs were the most awkward I've ever fitted

Not much space to get them in

 The balcony handrail also took some thinking about, this went in easy once we decided on our method and looked really smart when they were finished

Balcony to be hand railed off

 The only difficult with them was clamping the handrail to the newel posts as the glue went off. Tom and me managed to quickly knock together a wooden clamp that could be wedged up so the glue could go off over night, leaving a perfectly tight joint in the morning.

Clamping the handrail together with a quickly built clamp

The adjustable end of the clamp

Balcony handrail finished

 Tom and me worked really fast doing the second fit together, I think we were both impressed with the amount of work we got done in the time. We had a good system going and each stuck to a certain job to increase speed and keep the quality high.

Tom routing hinges out of the doors

Oak doors, pine linings and MDF architraves and skirting fitted.

All in all it was an interesting experience. I enjoyed working with Tom Weston again - who is an excellent carpenter (I think we both learnt a lot from each other) and made good friends with the plasterer, Rick, who came out with us. We worked hard and did a serious amount of hours, but I was missing my family by the end of the week so I was glad to come back to a rainy UK yesterday.
I learnt lots and got some good stories to tell, not much more you could ask for really!

Hanging A Large Oak Door

Yesterday I hung a 3'3" wide oak door delivered by the joiner.

 I think this is the widest single door I've hung. But there's a 3'5" one to do yet.

It's nice to work with some oak again as we seem to be using lots of sapele lately - which is not my favourite by any stretch of the imagination! I've got to glaze it yet and add the ironmongery but it's a smart looking door leading to the orangery, I hope the customer likes it.

Repairing Old Doors

Some low quality photos on this post sorry! 

Last week was pretty cold, not getting above freezing for most of it and I had the pleasure of being out in it everyday except Friday where it hammered down with rain all day. Installing gutter in the rain is a job even I draw the line at, so I went on to repairing some doors that the other carpenter and I had hung previously.

These door weren't the easiest thing to hang in the first place with big cast hinges to remove & fill and frames where the wood seems too thin to hold the new screws needing splicing. On top of that some have got panels that are split and need replacing.

I first removed the beads from one side of the panel, on doing this I discovered that the panels are also fitted into a grove in the door. There is no way I could split the door apart and expect it to go back together (things would fall apart), instead I had to cut right round the panel (the multimaster came in handy again here) to remove it.

I then planed some boards to 10mm thick and fitted then in the door and replaced the beads I saved.

Now the painters fun starts - they're going to need quite a bit of prep work before they're ready to paint! Still doing this work preserves some of the character of the house rather than just buying new doors.